he land. Better throw the
halyards down on deck and make the watch stand by. Of course they'll
sleep, but make them sleep on the halyards and sheets."

Jerry roused to Skipper's entrance under the blanket, and, quite as if it
were a long-established custom, curled in between his arm and side, and,
after one happy sniff and one kiss of his cool little tongue, as Skipper
pressed his cheek against him caressingly, dozed off to sleep.

Half an hour later, to all intents and purposes, so far as Jerry could or
could not comprehend, the world might well have seemed suddenly coming to
an end. What awoke him was the flying leap of Skipper that sent the
blanket one way and Jerry the other. The deck of the _Arangi_ had become
a wall, down which Jerry slipped through the roaring dark. Every rope
and shroud was thrumming and screeching in resistance to the fierce
weight of the squall.

"Stand by main halyards!--Jump!" he could hear Skipper shouting loudly;
also he heard the high note of the mainsheet screaming across the sheaves
as Van Horn, bending braces in the dark, was swiftly slacking the sheet
through his scorching palms with a single turn on the cleat.

While all this, along with many other noises, squealings of boat-boys and
shouts of Borckman, was impacting on Jerry's ear-drums, he was still
sliding down the steep deck of his new and unstable world. But he did
not bring up against the rail where his fragile ribs might well have been
broken. Instead, the warm ocean water, pouring inboard across the buried
rail in a flood of pale phosphorescent fire, cushioned his fall. A
raffle of trailing ropes entangled him as he struck out to swim.

And he swam, not to save his life, not with the fear of death upon him.
There was but one idea in his mind. _Where_ _was_ _Skipper_? Not that
he had any thought of trying to save Skipper, nor that he might be of
assistance to him. It was the heart of love that drives one always
toward the beloved. As the mother in catastrophe tries to gain her babe,
as the Greek who, dying, remembered sweet Argos, as soldiers on a
stricken field pass with the names of their women upon their lips, so
Jerry, in this wreck of a world, yearned toward Skipper.

The squall ceased as abruptly as it had struck. The _Arangi_ righted
with a jerk to an even keel, leaving Jerry stranded in the starboard
scuppers. He trotted across the level deck to Skipper, who, standing
erect on wide-spread legs, the b